“The first thing we have to do is recognise the mistakes of the past, let’s be absolutely frank and honest about this. We now have, within many European countries, and dare I say it within the USA too, a fifth column living within our own countries, people mercifully few in numbers, but people who are out to destroy our whole civilisation and our way of life.”
And they’re not just Muslim fundamentalists either.
H/T Harley, as the wave of prohibitions continues:
Time to prohibit smoking in cars with children
Scotland is moving forward on the road to prohibiting smoking in cars with children on board.
A Member’s Bill to introduce the legislation has already been launched at the Scottish Parliament, something ASH Scotland has fully supported.
In addition, the Scottish Government has recently taken a more direct interest in the subject, through its consultation on electronic cigarettes and tobacco control. The consultation asked if it should be an offence for an adult to smoke in a vehicle carrying someone under the age of 18.
Brussels bureaucrats kill off Sunday roast with new green rules for ovens
BRUSSELS bureaucrats are putting the Sunday roast at risk by targeting ovens to advance their green agenda.
A diktat from EU chiefs will impose power limits on all new cookers as a way of saving energy.
The unelected officials say they will save people up to £32 a year, but critics fear ovens will take longer to heat and render traditional recipes useless.
The ruling will require new energy efficiency requirements for ovens, hobs and range hoods by next month.
More rules to be brought in on February 26 for electric and gas ovens will limit cavity size and wattage.
While in New Orleans, a culture-killing smoking ban has been delayed a few months:
Quick update on the proposed vaping and smoking ban in New Orleans: the council committee voted 3/2 today to “bring the issue to the full council for more public debate”, much to the chagrin of the anti-smokers in the room who wanted the committee to vote to bring the ordinance for a full vote before the entire council TOMORROW.
These are the the real fifth columnists out to destroy our whole civilisation and our way of life. They don’t use kalashnikovs to do it. They use restrictive legislation to eat away at our freedoms, and gradually bury everyone under an asphyxiating mantle of regulations.
Everything is under attack. Absolutely everything. It’s not just smoking and drinking. It’s the food we eat, the cars we drive, the energy we consume. Out whole culture is under attack from an army of bureaucrats, who are working continually to take away our freedoms, one by one.
Nigel Farage again:
“We come from countries with Christian cultures and Christian constitutions, and it’s about time we started standing up for that.”
Frank Davis 
Everything is under attack, indeed!
I’ve often thought that it all started in earnest with the current war on smoking (which isn’t and never was about health at all) and ‘politically correct’ words. They’re both gateways for control over individuals; one over the body, and the other over thoughts and words.
The WHO Attempts To Censor Websites
As well as being entirely unelected, it appears that the World Health Organisation also doesn’t care much for openness and transparency.
Rumours have reached Puddlecote Towers that the WHO is spitting blood about a leaked document from a November 2013 meeting being widely discussed, and is busily putting the frighteners on those who are discussing it. They are not happy with minutes which mention that the WHO views e-cigarettes as a threat – and which prompted a much-reported recent letter to the WHO by over 50 health professionals – reaching the internet, so are doing their best to make the document disappear.
It was leaked to the Financial Times in April and has been quoted on a number of sites including Clive Bates’s blog a few days later. Now, however, I understand the WHO are issuing legal letters demanding the minutes be removed and ordering the site owners not to make any reference to the minutes or to quote from them.
In case you’re curious, this is the document in question, with paragraphs 11, 23 and 69-75 the parts that the WHO would prefer you didn’t know about until they pursue classifying e-cigs as tobacco products in Moscow in November.
WHO Leaked Document about E-Cigs
http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-who-attempts-to-censor-websites.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DickPuddlecote+%28Dick+Puddlecote%29
You and me both, Tom. I think that the whole smoking ban was a kind of testing-the-water experiment for the powers-that-be to see (a) how far they could go intruding into people’s personal lives without causing an uproar or a riot (quite far, so it seems) and (b) the best way, in A-B-C steps to go about it. In view of the fact that the smoking ban is in place, everyone’s adhered rigidly to it, non-smokers have shrugged their shoulders with a kind of “doesn’t affect me, so I’m not bothered” attitude and the public have showed their huge predisposition to accept anything which has the word “research,” “science” or “expert” stuck in there somewhere, I imagine that they’re quite pleased overall. It’s no wonder they’ve started down precisely the same road with alcohol and tasty foods and car driving etc. Why change a winning formula? It’s highly likely that non-smoking drinkers will moan and curse but nonetheless put up with ever-increasing restrictions on alcohol consumption; people whose diets don’t comprise 90% junk food (which is most people, despite the scare stories) will similarly shrug their shoulders when the price of McDonald’s shoots through the roof; car drivers will keep shelling out ever-increasing amounts of money for increasingly-tiny infringements of rafts of new vehicle legislation with no more than a sigh of resignation. And all, including seemingly intelligent and rational people, will believe that they’re putting up with all this for the “benefit of society” because some pseudo-scientist has shown that it’s necessary for the health of the nation or the survival of the planet or “the good of the cheeeldren,” or something.
Oh, well, they do say that a people gets the Government it deserves, so maybe the gullible fools who make up the majority of the population of this country deserve everything that’s coming to them. Go ahead, then, powers-that-be. Ban all their pleasures, I say, then we smokers will just sit back smugly and enjoy the incessant whining which follows. After all, we’re used to it – they’ve been whining about having to wash their hair more than they’d like because of us for decades. It’ll make a nice change for them to be whining about something else!
Hear hear, well said.
Yes.
But is a McDonald’s cheeseburger “junk food”? What’s “junk” about it? People must be buying it because they like it.
I wonder whether simply calling something “junk food” enough times results in people automatically calling any kind of a takeaway food “junk food”. That would include not just burgers but also fish and chips, pizza, and Indian and Chinese food.
In a world in which tobacco has been pretty thoroughly defamed, everything else is being defamed as well.
Heres a comment I wrote last fall in a Tokyo ban agenda for the Olympics………..
Of you City Councilmen who went to the FANCY FARM political cookout you survived 10s of Millions of cigarettes in comparable smoke and chemicals yet you now want to ban smokers from the parks and other outdoor spaces! Then by the same context you must also ban RESTARAUNTS,MOMS HOME COOKING,YOUR OWN EXHALED HUMAN BREATH!
Mcdonalds Serves up 75 hamburgers a second worldwide that’s the same as serving up 18,750 cigarettes a second worldwide smoke and chemicals released indoors and out,yet they ban a few smokers from smoking inside when a lousy hamburger creates as much as 250 cigarettes worth of equivalent smoke and chemicals………………ROFLMAO!
BTW Mcdonalds just dropped all big macs and all super sizing from their menus this coming year. We can take a wild guess at who coerced such a move.
There is indeed a cultural war going on. Call it societal warfare with in the Long Emergency toward a new Dark Age. The never-ending prohibitions are both a tool for social control and a consequence of securitization. Control because it not only lists individual and collective liberty for som, but it also divides segments of society in order to limit opposition. It also allows the segment of society that supports the prohibitions to feel they are being heard and thus empowered. Of course they have been fooled into playing at the margins in a tangental game that has no real political importance in the main struggles.
Even the petit politicians are intoxicated with their illusion of power. They can add new bans on behavior (be it a smoking ban or a ban on wearing a hijab or burka) and feel they have influence. But since the major issues aren’t women wearing hijab or people sing in bars and pubs the cultural and class warfare will continue to spin out of control.
The propaganda campaigns for antismoking have worked well to blind and manipulate petit politicians (like many member of the New Orleans City Council). They believe SHS is a health risk. That’s what they have heard. They believe the ‘miracle’ health improvements that the antismokers tout as being real proof that they are doing the right thing. They can’t even process the fact that these claims are false or misleading because they have heard them so long and they have been conditioned to find cigarette smoke irritating. Of course, for example, they claim asthma in children is caused by smoking; never mind that smoking rates have gone down while asthma rate have gone up.
Unfortunately the regular readers here already know this and have shared the studies for years. The politicians enacting the new bans don’t. As Harley noted in a prior post a city council in Florida tried to enact a ban for outdoor smoking even though that was preempted by state law. The same has happened in North Carolina. In California a city (Turlock) recently sought to enact a park smoking ban even though there was already a ban in place. (Kind of scary that the lawmakers didn’t check current law before attempting to legislate.)
Its kind of like when the bubonic plague spread the world over and nobody knew why.
If anti-tobacco was looked upon as a disease of civilization and mankind what might be our cure for it. Truth maybe or just finally everyone has had enuf and a return to civil society again. What ever the cure is it will be a political one.
Multiculturalism in full force LOL!
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/01/new_orleans_bar_and_casino_wor.html#comments
Battle in progress even with the writer from NOLA if ya can get in and not be banned just for fighting back.
A Framework Convention on Alcohol Control : The Lancet
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61486-X/…
A Framework Convention on Alcohol Control. By – The Lancet … International conventions exist to control narcotics, psychotropic substances, tobacco, and …
.
A framework convention for alcohol? – ALICE RAP
http://www.alicerap.eu/blog/101-a-framework-convention-for-alcohol.html
… Home Blog A framework convention for alcohol? … treaties like the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control or the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs set up …
FCAC – absolutely, Jack. Just like I wrote above – why change a winning formula. Just bully every country (almost) in the world to sign up to it, or else, and bingo, you have a War on Drinkers which exactly mimics the current War on Smokers. Shame drinkers are either too busy burying their heads in the sand (“But we’re different! We’re not wicked smokers!” they will cry) or too proud to admit that to fight the FCAC, they’ve got to join forces with smokers and fight the FCTC, too (to avoid being – rightly – accused of hypocrisy, which immediately negates any of their arguments) to see what’s happening.
The myth of smoking during pregnancy being harmful
Wed, 30 Oct 2013 17:51 CDT
In about 1999 I was asked to analyze the data of pregnant women with respect to smoking for a major health insurance company. They were running a campaign to get pregnant women to stop smoking and they expected to find interesting data to support their case.
I used to teach college courses covering the topic. The text books said that smoking causes underweight premature babies. Because of this babies of smoking mothers are more likely to have birth defects. With alcohol, two drinks a day was considered safe, but with tobacco, there was no safe threshold. I thought this was rather strange. You smoke one cigarette while pregnant and you are more likely to have birth defects? Even for a hard core health fanatic that is difficult to believe.
Here is what was found in the data. Babies of smoking mothers average weight was 3232 grams (7.1 lbs.). Babies of non-smoking mothers averaged 3398 grams (7.5 lbs.). That is about a half pound difference and it is statistically significant. Seven pounds is a good healthy birth weight that does not set off any alarms. Babies are considered underweight if they are less than 2270 grams (5 lbs.). 4.5% of smoking mothers babies were underweight and 3.3% of non-smoking mothers babies were underweight. This difference is not significant. There is no indication here of a health risk from smoking based on weight.
The other risk factor is length of term. Normal gestation is 253 days. 4% of smoking mothers did not go to term and 7.8% of non-smoking mothers did not go to term. Smoking mothers did better than non-smoking mothers but the difference was not significant. There was obviously no risk from reduced term for smoking mothers.
Because the non-smoking mothers had heavier babies one would expect more C-Sections from the non-smoking mothers. There were about 20% more. This is significant at the .05 level but not the .01 level so you could argue the significance either way depending on your bias. The data here is limited because only 5% of pregnant women smoked but the trend for smoking mothers was toward less babies retained in the hospital, less C-Sections, insignificantly fewer pre-term deliveries and an insignificant increase in clinically underweight babies.
This data can be explained by assuming that when pregnant women are stressed, they self medicate to relieve the stress. Non-smoking women tend to eat more causing the baby to be larger and more difficult to deliver. This can also cause other problems. Smoking women tend to light up when under stress. This is less harmful to the baby than over-eating. For this reason smoking mothers tended to have better outcomes for baby and mother. They also cost less for the insurance company.
You might be interested in knowing that this information was not used. I was told that the medical insurance business is highly regulated by the government. The company was not allowed to tell the truth about these results even though it was better for the insurance company and for the patients.
I do not think these results suggest that women should start smoking when they get pregnant. I do think it indicates that it is very poor practice to try to get smoking mothers to stop smoking when they get pregnant.
About me
I have a Ph.D. in experimental psychology and have worked in both research and teaching. I am a health nut and do not endorse smoking or care to be around people smoking. I was shocked by these results. My bias if any is certainly against these results. However I think it is horrible to withhold information form people and intentionally give them bad advice to advance a political agenda.
http://www.sott.net/article/268159-The-myth-of-smoking-during-pregnancy-being-harmful
Smoking during pregnancy is ‘not that bad’ – 2008
“It also shows that the worst effects are suffered by women from the poorest backgrounds, because in their case smoking is often combined with other unhealthy activities, such as poor diet and consumption of alcohol.
Middle-class women suffer almost no damaging effects, the analysis suggests, even if they continue to smoke throughout pregnancy.
The findings, published as a report, will not be welcomed by anti-smoking groups, whose message to young women is intended to make them feel guilty about damaging their babies.”
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/smoking-during-pregnancy-is-not-that-bad-26423229.html
The gas in cigarette smoke ‘that could save a pregnancy’ – 2006
“Carbon monoxide could help control a life-threatening condition in pregnant women.”
“Researchers say that the deadly gas, found in cigarette smoke and car fumes, can protect against pre-eclampsia, a serious complication of pregnancy.
It affects one in ten pregnancies in the UK and claims the lives of up to six mothers and 600 babies a year. Symptoms include high blood pressure, blood clots and kidney damage, with the only cure being early delivery of the baby by emergency Caesarean.
Controlled doses of carbon monoxide could one day be used prevent the condition, which is thought to stem from damage to the placenta.”
“Researcher Dr Graeme Smith, an expert in high-risk pregnancies, said: “We believe the carbon monoxide found in cigarette smoke, and carried in a smoking mother’s blood, may be the cause of their lower risk of developing preeclampsia.
“We have to develop some kind of delivery system. The ideal would likely to be to maintain carbon monoxide levels comparable to a moderate, say one pack a day, smoker, without all the bad stuff in cigarette smoke.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-405425/The-gas-cigarette-smoke-save-pregnancy.html
Maternal exposure to moderate ambient carbon monoxide is associated with decreased risk of preeclampsia. – 2012
“The inverse association between CO concentration and preeclampsia risk remained the same after adjustment for several important confounding factors.
CONCLUSION:
Maternal exposure to moderate ambient CO is associated independently with a decreased risk of preeclampsia.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22521459
Carbon Monoxide Prevents Hypertension and Proteinuria in an Adenovirus sFlt-1 Preeclampsia-Like Mouse Model – 2014
Abstract
“Preeclampsia (PE) remains a leading cause of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality worldwide. Smoking cigarettes is associated with a decreased incidence of PE. Based on this observation and previous work, we hypothesize that women who smoke have a lower risk of developing PE because of elevated levels of carbon monoxide (CO) in their blood.”
http: //www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0106502
“In fact CO is produced as a normal part of a reaction that generates antioxidants in the blood when tissues are inflamed. It was once dismissed as a worthless by-product of this reaction, but now it seems that the gas itself has the ability to calm inflammation in humans too.
“Your body is already loaded with carbon monoxide,says Huib Kerstjens, …”
http: //www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726484.100-carbon-monoxide-could-fight-disease.html
This is no good because it merely claims that carbon monoxide might be beneficial in a tiny minority of cases, while not contesting the anti-smokers claim that it’s bad in the vast majority of them. And that’s exactly what they WANT you to do. That’s why that stuff was anti-smoker-approved for mass media dissemination in the first place – BECAUSE IT’S HARMLESS TO THEIR BIG LIES.
It’s not about us, it’s just a small part of the new research on the health benefits of carbon monoxide. There is research being done on making carbon monoxide pills to spread the benefits to those who need them.
Smokers are a self selected human trial on the anti-inflammatory effects of carbon monoxide, I’m glad that some scientists are making use of the information. Some experimentors don’t even make the smoking connection. But I do.
it’s relatively new, the earliest I can find.
Carbon Monoxide Gas Is Used by Brain Cells As a Neurotransmitter – 1993
“THE simple gas carbon monoxide is used by nerve cells to signal each other, researchers have found in a discovery that could open the way to a new understanding of how the brain operates.
The discovery follows a finding that another simple gas, nitric oxide, can also signal nerve cells. Together the two gases break all the old rules on how neurotransmitters work.
Neurobiologists have been finding neurotransmitters since the 1920’s and thought they had the rules for nerve signaling in hand. Each substance was thought to be stable and specific. One nerve cell would release the transmitter and it would fit into the next cell like a key in a lock.
But gases are volatile and nonspecific, and they diffuse into any nearby cells. Transmitters were also thought to be stored in small pouches in cells that made them and released when necessary. But gases are not stored and are made only when needed.”
“It’s a whole brand new signaling mechanism,” said Dr. Charles Stevens, a neurobiologist who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institutes investigator at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
The carbon monoxide discovery by Dr. Ajay Verma, Dr. Solomon H. Snyder and their colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore was reported this month in the journal Science.”
“As the carbon monoxide work gets under way, Dr. Snyder said, he is trying to think of another gas that could be a transmitter, reasoning that where there are two, there are probably three or more. And, he says, the new findings about carbon monoxide and nitric oxide have taught neurobiologists an important lesson: “It makes you think that when people are evaluating whether a given chemical is a candidate neurotransmitter, they ought to be very careful about applying the rules of ancient days.”
If you want big lies, try this gem from Pfizer.
The benefits of quitting
“After 24 hours
By now all the carbon monoxide is completely eliminated from the body.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20090105220440/http://www.pfizerlife.co.uk/SmokingTheBenefitsOfQuitting.aspx
You’d be in terrible trouble if it was.
Just for you.
Smoking Could Reduce Risk Of Joint Replacement Surgery
“Men who smoke have less of a risk of needing joint replacement surgery than those who have never lit up a cigarette, according to a new study published online in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.
“The study, which was led by George Mnatzaganian, a Ph. D. student at the University of Adelaide in Australia, analyzed study data of more than 11,000 subjects and discovered that those who had smoked for 48 years or more had a 42% to 51% lower risk of needing a total knee or hip replacement than those who had never done so.”
”Our study is the first to demonstrate a strong inverse correlation between smoking duration and risk of total joint replacement,” Mnatzaganian said in a statement”
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/2076418/smoking_could_reduce_risk_of_joint_replacement_surgery/
Smoking, body weight, physical exercise, and risk of lower limb total joint replacement in a population-based cohort of men.
Mnatzaganian G
“OBJECTIVE:
To assess the associations of smoking, body weight, and physical activity with risk of undergoing total joint replacement (TJR) in a population-based cohort of men.
CONCLUSION:
Our findings indicate that being overweight and reporting vigorous physical activity increase the risk of TJR. This study is the first to demonstrate a strong inverse dose-response relationship between duration of smoking and risk of TJR.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21748729
“The carbon monoxide-releasing molecule tricarbonyldichlororuthenium(II) dimer protects human osteoarthritic chondrocytes and cartilage from the catabolic actions of interleukin-1beta.”
http: //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18195133
Probably why the heavy duty gardening hasn’t caught up with me yet.
If the anti-smokers actually read the full text, they’ll gleefully quote its anti-smoking screed in your face.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/art.30400/full
Undoubtedly, but I have long since given up caring, like the Spanish Inquisition, they will never consider a reasoned debate.
Rose, Thanks for this gem:
“After 24 hours
By now all the carbon monoxide is completely eliminated from the body.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20090105220440/http://www.pfizerlife.co.uk/SmokingTheBenefitsOfQuitting.aspx
You’d be in terrible trouble if it was.
It made me laugh!!!!
You sure would be in terrible trouble if it was!!! Red cells are continuously produced with a life span of ca. 30 days. Carbon monoxide lodges irreversibly in the haemoglobin (Hb) molecule, if they all were degraded 24hours after exposure, your Hb would fall to a non-viable level, since our bone marrow cannot replace ‘the lot’ in 24 hours.
A good thing about smoking is that our body increases the production of Hb since a minute amount of CO is ‘lodged’ in place of O2 in the Hb molecule. Our blood actually is very much in demand for providing donor blood.
Unfortunately in 2013 the public was told that smokers’ blood is dirty. A lot of smokers assume that their blood donation is pointless. AS (Anti-smoking State) must be reeling since it can’t backpeddle and admit it was (is ) LYING)
Btw, if it came to having to climb Mount Everest at hoc, smokers adjust much quicker to the ‘thin’ air at some of the camps than non-smokers (who have been ‘safely’ kept away from smokers!). The non-smokers’ bone marrow has to be stimulated to increase the production of red blood cells, the smokers’ is already geared up to do so and can increase production much quicker.
Glad you like it, Brigitte, it’s one of my favourites.
Part of our mountain climbing capabilities is due to inhaling nitric oxide from the smoke, not being Tibetans, who have extra naturally it appears.
“… the discovery also explains why mountain climbers short of breath often claim that smoking cigarettes makes them stronger. The seeming paradox may be due to the presence of nitric oxide in cigarette smoke”
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1993/2/11/study-finds-benefits-of-pollutant-pa/
Nitric oxide helps high-altitude survival
“CLEVELAND, Nov. 6 US researchers have discovered high blood levels of nitric oxide allow people to live at high altitudes where air has low levels of oxygen.
Dr. Serpil Erzurum, chairman of the Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Pathobiology, and colleagues from Case Western Reserve University analyzed blood samples and blood flow readings from 88 Tibetans living at altitudes of 14,000 feet. They compared the measurements with those of 50 people who live at locations near sea level.
The Tibetans were found to have 10 times more nitric oxide and more than double the forearm blood flow of sea-level dwellers.
The researchers said they believe the high levels of nitric oxide cause an increased blood flow that provides body tissues with sufficient amounts of oxygen despite low levels of oxygen in both the air and the bloodstream.”
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2007/11/06/Nitric_oxide_helps_high-altitude_survival/UPI-20491194386939/
Not that I ever intend to test the theory.
mountain climbers short of breath often claim that smoking cigarettes makes them stronger.
That might explain why the Incas grew tobacco on their mountain terraces in Peru. I was watching a BBC iplayer documentary about them a few days ago. Of course, there was a lot of tut-tutting that they’d been stupid enough to grow useless and dangerous tobacco.
“Of course, there was a lot of tut-tutting that they’d been stupid enough to grow useless and dangerous tobacco.”
So they’re supposed to grow coca instead?
So they’re supposed to grow coca instead?
In addition rather than instead. They chew the leaves, I believe. It improves endurance when walking long distances, as many probably still do.
You don’t counter anti-smoker lies with anonymous, undocumented claims involving unknown study populations. Or with anti-smoker-approved mass media drivel that tries to blame “other unhealthy activities” or dubious theories that really just give a boost to anti-smoker claims about carbon monoxide.
“Acute chorioamnionitis is the largest contributor to the poor pregnancy outcomes of black women and women who have low socioeconomic status,” and it is “the most common cause of preterm labor wherever it has been studied” (RL Naeye. Acute chorioamnionitis and the disorders that produce placental insufficiency. In: Monographs in Pathology No. 33, Pathology of Reproductive Failure. FT Krause et al., eds.Williams and Wilkins, 1991, Ch 10, pp 286-307).
Pathological examination of the placenta is necessary to determine the presence of chorioamnionitis in epidemiological studies, because there is sufficient clinical evidence to diagnose the infection in only about 10% of affected pregnancies. Even in cases that turned out to be fatal, there was sufficient clinical evidence for a diagnosis in only one fourth of them. (RL Naeye. Editorial. The investigation of perinatal deaths. NEJM 1983;309(10):611-612.)
“We recently found no significant association between maternal smoking and either stillbirths or neonatal deaths when information about the underlying disorders, obtained from placental examinations, was incorporated into the analysis. Similar analyses found no correlation between maternal smoking and preterm birth. The most frequent initiating causes of preterm birth, stillbirth, and neonatal death are acute chorioamnionitis, disorders that produce chronic low blood flow from the uterus to the placenta, and major congenital malformations. There is no credible evidence that cigarette smoking plays a role in the genesis of any of these disorders.” (RL Naeye. Disorders of the placenta, fetus and neonate, diagnosis and clinical significance. CV Mosby Co., 1992.)
Naeye’s study population was the 56,000 pregnancies of the Collaborative Perinatal Project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Neurological Diseases and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health, in which nearly 45,000 placentas were painstakingly examined. This is an enormous, gold-standard study with no equivalent in either size or quality, and the anti-smoking conspirators have purposely covered it up.
The anti-smokers’ studies are all based on lifestyle questionnaires, with NO PATHOLOGICAL EXAMINATIONS. That means they missed 90% of the cases, which were disproportionately common among smokers, for socioeconomic reasons. That’s how they falsely blame smoking.
http://www.smokershistory.com/perinata.htm
You don’t counter anti-smoker lies with anonymous, undocumented claims involving unknown study populations. Or with anti-smoker-approved mass media drivel that tries to blame “other unhealthy activities” or dubious theories that really just give a boost to anti-smoker claims about carbon monoxide
Don’t you spot the named studies amongst the easily readable newspaper articles?
I do try to give both depending on space.
I am interested in the properties of the plant, it’s an ancient medical herb after all, or do you believe the anti-tobacco mantra that there is absolutely nothing beneficial in smoking tobacco?
“Don’t you spot the named studies amongst the easily readable newspaper articles?”
I was referring to the anecdote from “Jack Listerio” when I referred to “anonymous, undocumented claims involving unknown study populations.” But including links to the actual studies doesn’t change the fact that they are a lame comeback to anti-smoker lies about smoking in pregnancy, because they blame carbon monoxide for more things than you can exonerate it with.
“I am interested in the properties of the plant, it’s an ancient medical herb after all, or do you believe the anti-tobacco mantra that there is absolutely nothing beneficial in smoking tobacco?”
I believe that it’s a lame argument because it’s concedes everything else to the anti-smokers.
It’s a waste of time arguing with anti-smokers, the clue is in the name.
OSHA also took on the passive smoking fraud and this is what came of it:
Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: Third Edition
nap.edu
This sorta says it all
These limits generally are based on assessments of health risk and calculations of concentrations that are associated with what the regulators believe to be negligibly small risks. The calculations are made after first identifying the total dose of a chemical that is safe (poses a negligible risk) and then determining the concentration of that chemical in the medium of concern that should not be exceeded if exposed individuals (typically those at the high end of media contact) are not to incur a dose greater than the safe one.
So OSHA standards are what is the guideline for what is acceptable ”SAFE LEVELS”
OSHA SAFE LEVELS
All this is in a small sealed room 9×20 and must occur in ONE HOUR.
For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes.
“For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes.
“Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.
Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up.
“For Hydroquinone, “only” 1250 cigarettes.
For arsenic 2 million 500,000 smokers at one time.
The same number of cigarettes required for the other so called chemicals in shs/ets will have the same outcomes.
So, OSHA finally makes a statement on shs/ets :
Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.” -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA.
Why are their any smoking bans at all they have absolutely no validity to the courts or to science!
Then the anti-smokers promptly post a whole buttload more chemicals that you don’t mention. And that’s why what you’re doing is nothing but a fool’s task: The anti-smokers fire a shotgun, and you rush around trying to neutralize every pellet, while their real heavy weaponry is something else entirely, namely those lifestyle questionnaire studies..
So you would prefer the public not to know, Carol? It would certainly save Harley a lot of hard work.
“So you would prefer the public not to know, Carol?”
The public doesn’t give a damn! Those things aren’t what matters. The lifestyle questionnaire studies say otherwise, and because the anti-smokers can post lists of more chemicals, the public simply presumes that Harley is lying by omission. And the duel of Harley versus the anti-smokers simply fills the comments section with such a massive volume of crap that nobody else can get a word in edgewise. Harley makes things difficult for other readers, which is why he gets banned. Working hard at a fool’s task is no virtue.
The public doesn’t give a damn!
This is not quite correct. However, Carol, if you present your findings as aggressive as you do, the public will back off.
I talk to the public, mostly joking. And I do ask them to think about a few things. About 90% of people I talk to are visibly relieved and some actually do say: ‘Glad you mention this, I am not the only one then…’
“However, Carol, if you present your findings as aggressive as you do, the public will back off.”
Are you kidding? The public has been backing off for decades because smokers don’t fight back. And if anti-smokers “back off,” so much the better.
Coulter: Dying for a cigarette in New York
If you’re wondering why New York City police officers keep turning their back on Mayor Bill de Blasio, let’s review parts of the mayor’s recent speech on the Eric Garner case that have been removed from the “Official Website of the City of New York.”
De Blasio said:
”I was at the White House the other day, and the president of the United States turned to me and said that (de Blasio son) Dante reminded him of what he looked like as a teenager.”
Why does Obama think every black teenager looks like him? Does he think they all look alike?
”He said, I know, you see this crisis through a very personal lens and I said to him, I did. Because (de Blasio wife) Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face. Good young man, law-abiding young man, never would think to do anything wrong and yet because of the history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face.”
What dangers might lurk in New York City for a young black male?
”… we’ve had to literally train him as families have all over this city for decades in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.”
It must be awful having to tell your teenage son to never physically assault a police officer. I’m so lucky I’m white and have the liberty to lunge for cops’ guns whenever I want.
”… So I’ve had to worry over the years for, Chirlane had to worry. Was Dante safe each night? … And not just from some of the painful realities, crime and violence in some of our neighborhoods, but they say from the very people they want to have faith in as their protectors.”
Yes, Bill de Blasio worries at night that, in a city where more than 90 percent of murders are committed by young black men, Dante will be shot by a cop. And he said this knowing full well that the police sergeant overseeing Garner’s arrest was a black female officer.
”That’s the reality.”
The “reality” is that hundreds of blacks are killed in New York City every year by other blacks. Last year, only six black men — all brandishing guns or knives — were shot and killed by cops.
”(People have) said black lives matter. And they said it because it had to be said. … Our history sadly requires us to say that black lives matter. … We are dealing with centuries of racism that have brought us to this day. That is how profound the crisis is.”
Somebody should tell black gang members that black lives matter.
As I have repeatedly tweeted, the correct chant for Garner’s case is: Hey, de Blasio! Black lives matter more than your $%&* tax money! What “brought us to this day” is not a “history” of racism; it’s the left’s maniacal pursuit of taxes — the precise reason cops were arresting Eric Garner. He was selling untaxed cigarettes. He resisted arrest and, in the tussle, had a fatal heart attack.
Cops don’t want to enforce these nonsense revenue-generating laws, but that’s their job.
By contrast, the only time liberals like cops is when they’re enforcing tax laws, so dear to the heart of politicians like de Blasio. Liberals will call out the Marines to collect taxes in order to pay public school teachers’ exorbitant pensions.
Recall that when Gov. Andrew Cuomo told de Blasio he could fund his precious universal pre-K without raising taxes, de Blasio angrily objected. No, he wanted to raise taxes on “the rich.” You know, like those filthy rich tycoons who sell loose cigarettes on the street in Staten Island.
The very week that no police officers were indicted in the Garner case, New York City’s Law Department was drafting a groundbreaking civil racketeering suit against an out-of-state tobacco company, Discount Tobacco of Virginia, for selling untaxed cigarettes to a Staten Island reseller.
Apparently unaware that de Blasio was — at that very moment — calling NYPD officers racist for bothering with such “a minor offense” as selling untaxed cigarettes, the Law Department produced a triumphant press release, crowing about the city’s suing people in other states for violating New York’s tobacco laws.
Lawyers: Hey, Mayor — here’s that press release about the cigarette tax lawsuit!
De Blasio: Shhhh! I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Lawyers: You know — the cigarette tax case. The one we’ve been working on so hard.
De Blasio: Who are you?
City Hall promptly buried the press release in a casket in the middle of the Hudson River.
Quite shrewdly, New York City cops have responded to de Blasio’s attack on them by overlooking violations of these revenue-generating laws. Guess who’s hysterical about the tax-collection slowdown? Liberals would sooner have the police ignore murder laws than forget to hand out parking tickets.
On Monday night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported in horror that there has been a major reduction in fine-collection by the police. NEW YORKERS ARE GETTING AWAY WITH IDLING THEIR CARS! WHAT KIND OF A CITY HAVE WE BECOME? She accused the police of “holding a city hostage,” warning, “If they feel like they don’t have public support now, is this supposed to earn it back?”
Why, yes, I think it is. The only time normal people get annoyed at cops is precisely for these revenue-collection laws — parking tickets, moving violations, driving without a seatbelt, selling untaxed cigarettes, jaywalking and so on. So it was quite brilliant of the cops to zero in on the laws that exist just because Democrats want the money.
At least among people who generally like cops, the NYPD has made itself spectacularly popular.
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/columnists/2015/01/07/coulter-eric-garner-new-york-de-blasio/21419951/
Bootleg cigarettes, Prohibition and the death of Eric Garner
by Walter Olson on December 6, 2014
Eric Garner, asphyxiated during his arrest on Staten Island, had been repeatedly picked up by the NYPD for the crime of selling loose cigarettes. Washington Examiner:
The crime of selling “loosies” was not considered a serious one in the past. Many corner stores in New York City once sold them quietly upon request. But former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s cartoonish anti-tobacco crusade changed that and everything else. Smoking in public places was banned. Punitive taxes and a legal minimum price of $10.50 were imposed in an effort to push prices ever-upward, so that a brand-name pack of 20 cigarettes now costs as much as $14 in New York City.
As a result, the illicit sale of loose and untaxed cigarettes became more commonplace.
I noted at yesterday’s Repeal Day panel at Cato that according to figures last year, New York’s unusually high cigarette taxes had brought it an unusual distinction: an estimated 60 percent of consumption there is of smuggled or illegal cigarettes, much higher than any other state. Another way to think of it is that New York has moved closer to prohibition than to a legal market in tobacco. [earlier 2003 Cato study]
In his history of Prohibition, Last Call, Daniel Okrent cites (among many other law enforcement misadventures) the fatal shooting of Jacob Hanson, secretary of an Elks lodge in Niagara Falls, New York, in a confrontation with alcohol agents — though Hanson had a clean record and was not carrying alcohol. At the time, many saw Hanson’s death as reflecting poorly on the Prohibition regime generally. For some reason, though, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has drawn fire from some quarters for making a parallel observation about Garner’s death. [BBC; note however that while Garner’s frictions with the local NYPD seem to owe much to his repeated cigarette arrests, the proximate event leading to his arrest seems to have been his attempt to break up a fight]
Yale’s Stephen Carter: “On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce.” [Bloomberg View via Ilya Somin]
http://overlawyered.com/2014/12/eric-garner-criminalization-everyday-life/
Found a funny blog the other day about “The President’s Actual Imaginary Son.”
“Several commenters have pointed out that the President’s numerous references to the son he never had suggests he regrets that the First Lady didn’t bear him a son. I suspect that’s true, and that Obama would be a pretty good father to his imaginary son. I’m sure he’s a dutiful father to his daughters, but, beyond family history, he’s never been all that interested in the kinds of things that most interest teenage girls.
I further suspect, however, that the imaginary son Obama has in mind isn’t the beltless Thug Life victim of the White Male Power Structure’s Bloodlust that it’s politically profitable for the President to expound upon.
Trayvon Obama is thus the President’s imaginary imaginary son. Who is the President’s actual imaginary son?
I suspect that, deep down, the President most likes to imagine he had a son who shares his passion for … golf.
…Obama’s actual imaginary son, 14-year-old Ralph Waldo Emerson Obama, would play 36 holes per day over summer and be on the verge of breaking 70.”
http://www.unz.com/isteve/obamas-actual-imaginary-son/
Antismoking as bubonic plague. Now there’s a nice metaphor! Except not even a rat would want to have a case of Stanton Glantz! Or, Heaven forfend, a bad bout of Repace!
– MJM
LOL Michael. But who knows smoking might have run the fleas off if smoking had been around at the time!
Any civilised society needs a framework of laws to function. Fifty plus years ago the framework was quite broad and you only got into trouble with the law if you transgressed in a major way – e.g. robbery, violence, murder, fraud, treason, etc.
Over the years the main laws were tweaked to fill in some of the loopholes and to take account of modern life, but over the past few years (I’m not sure when it started, but I’m sure the EU has a part in this!) more and more laws have been enacted on ‘trivial’ matters such that what started out as a broad framework of laws now resembles a very tightly barred cage where it is all too easy to touch the electrified bars and end up in serious trouble.
I keep getting the mental image of Gulliver being pinned down by the Lilliputians as the perfect analogy for what is happening to all of us.
And the worst thing about all of these new laws is that they’re not based on any facts or proper scientific studies, they’re based on mob rule. A so-called ‘expert’ will say, “X is a bad thing and we should ban/regulate it, don’t you agree!” An unthinking public will then say, “Yes, I’ve always thought that…and I never liked the people who do X! Lets ban it!” So, one by one, minority activities become proscribed until the only approved activities are eating, sleeping and working!
Hopefully people will wake up before then, but I’m not so sure.
Gulliver being pinned down by the Lilliputians
That’s how I see it too. And the Lilliputians were of course small people, and their current incarnation are suitably small-minded.
Or we are all forced to live in gulags called government housing and squished together until we kill each other…………
…..except those that survive who will be deemed worthy to inherit the ‘brave new world’ of puritanism and joylessness…pass the sick bag!
No sick bag for me,Im going down fighting…………..or they will
They created bullshit laws and changed the degree or level of the crime………then created new crimes that aren’t crimes like smoking in a restaurant or a park or anywhere.
There isn’t one place in the world that you can find the same opinion as to what child abuse is. Its just that broad and opiniated. Even the definition of being a so called pedophile is so broad by most peoples standards in other places it boggles the mind. Who ever heard of date rape before the flagrant feminazis coined to to make new and bigger laws against men in general. Hate crimes laws another bleeding heart piece of shit legislation,which ends up being an attack directly on free speech. Hate is n emotion not a crime! A crime is when you physically do something against another……… merely hating someone is not a crime unless you act on it. then the act is the crime.
anti-smokers hate smokers we know this,their crime is when the ACTED ON THAT HATE by passing criminal laws against smoking………..
Smoke free and die: James Varney
As middle age approaches and the opportunities to wallow in vice decline, tobacco is one of the things usually cast aside. Kids arrive, for instance, or it could be clothes that smell like vomit or even a woman who has moved in and is bent on “improving” you.
I wish the best of health to New Orleans City Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, and she isn’t some zealot imposing her sanctimonious attitude on the city.
But she is bent on “improving” the city regardless of personal choice and liberty.
Cantrell has been pushing a proposal to ban smoking in New Orleans. The changes she has made to her anti-tobacco ordinance are good ones and reflect a flexible governing style other politicians should follow. But the best move would be to scrap the whole thing.
It’s the premise that’s suspect here, not Cantrell. It’s similar to many anti-gun measures. Fired guns and lit cigarettes do kill people, but the Second Amendment protects guns while tobacco is a legal product that brings in billions in taxes.
If someone wants to amend the Constitution or criminalize tobacco, their intentions would be just as noble. Such attempts would also have the added benefit of being the proper way of accomplishing their goal.
There is a genuine scientific consensus that smoking can cause cancer. There aren’t reasonable skeptics on this one. I quit smoking in part because I’m terrified of dying in agonizing pain from lung cancer. My father, a tobacco hater, scoffed at that possibility.
“Lung cancer?” he said. “The heart disease and emphysema will kill you before you even get lung cancer.”
There is considerably less scientific consensus on whether second hand smoke kills, or why tobacco can smell yummy in a jar and then like vomit minutes later.
In the United States, however, whether one wants to toy with a killer habit or reek like a port-a-let is a personal choice. It is also properly the choice of a business owner whether he permits such people and such habits in his tax-paying establishment.
Indeed, the proliferation of places where smoking is no longer allowed proves there is no need for sweeping legislation. Smokers are a dying breed already.
Forget about the deeply offensive idea government should be able to tell taxpayers whether they can fire up a Marlboro in the great wide open like City Park – that’s an idea much more totalitarian than American. Government has no business telling a restaurant or a bar or a casino whether its patrons can smoke.
Purely for research purposes, I walked into Harrah’s casino in New Orleans on Thursday. I entered one of the Poydras Street doors, showed my ID to the security woman who politely told me that wasn’t necessary, and got smacked with the stench of cigarette smoke.
It came as something of a revelation to me so many people gambled in the middle of a weekday. I was also surprised to learn that, aside from the Texas Hold ‘Em poker tables where earnest men who could use a little sun plied their trade, you could smoke just about anywhere in the casino.
But only that one corner smelled like it. Almost every ashtray was empty. There was lots of room and plenty of rows of slot machines and tables where non-smokers could lose their all without fearing the odor of second-hand smoke.
New Orleans has bars where opening the door is like Spicoli’s van. It also has bars where, even on days in which hypothermia is a real threat, you must go outside to light up. With free markets and free minds, owners and customers choose which such place they wish to run or patronize.
Cantrell has good intentions. So? Those should not trump personal freedom and liberty. If New Orleans wants to make tobacco illegal it should do so and it should give up every tobacco tax dollar it collects, too. That may open up a hole in the budget just like a cargo of hot smoke sucked into the lung opens up a hole in that organ.
Unless or until government chooses to go that far, however, anti-smoking ordinances should die.
James Varney can be reached at jvarney@nola.com
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2015/01/smoke_free_and_die_james_varne.html
Whilst the BBC today is providing endless cover of today’s hostage taking in warehouse on the outskirts of Paris as well as the hostage taking of shopprs/staff in a jewish supermarket, the Scottish anti-smokers are busy with:
Time to prohibit smoking in cars with children
And Brussels?
Brussels bureaucrats kill off Sunday roast with new green rules for ovens
Does it matter WHICH terrorists kill us off? Neither wants us to have a dignified life; both divide communities deeply; both are ruthless; both abuse religion to justify their dark deeds… etc.etc.etc.
They are not a fifth column, they are a filth column.
Congratulations cookout fans you’ve just survived being around second hand smoke for 120,000 years of equivalent exposure!
Barbecues poison the air with toxins and could cause cancer, research suggests. A study by the French environmental campaigning group Robin des Bois found that a typical two-hour barbecue can release the same level of dioxins as up to 220,000 cigarettes.
Dioxins are a group of chemicals known to increase the likelihood of cancer. The figures were based on grilling four large steaks, four turkey cuts and eight large sausages.”
Even the CANCER SOCIETY has benefit cookouts yet they push for smoking bans! Talk about being Hipocrits! Heres a real sweety pie of a special hype The Dumbest Fundraising Event Ever? American Cancer Society Joins BBQ Meat “Cook Off” to Raise Money for Cancer Research NaturalNews)
Texans living in Navarro County are about to win a collective award for being the dumbest people in the world when it comes to diet and nutrition: They are hosting a BBQ meat cook-off to raise money for — get this — cancer research!
Even the Governor of Kentucky and all the Anti-smoking Activists were at Fancy Farm for the big Political Cook Off Cook Out yet they too survived Inhaling 10S OF BILLIONS worth of equal cigarette smoke.
Even there own Human exhaled Breath creates hundreds of the same chemicals found in tobacco smoke yet we arent outlawing HUMANS FROM INDOOR SPACES………
Human Exhaled Air Analytics…” Buszewski et al, Biomed. Chromatogr. 21: 553–566 (2007) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com…
Don’t fret over list of cancer ‘risks’
“We are being bombarded” with messages about the dangers posed by common things in our lives, yet most exposures “are not at a level that are going to cause cancer,” said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society’s deputy chief medical officer.
Linda Birnbaum agrees. She is a toxicologist who heads the government agency that just declared styrene, an ingredient in fiberglass boats and Styrofoam, a likely cancer risk.
“Let me put your mind at ease right away about Styrofoam,” she said. Levels of styrene that leach from food containers “are hundreds if not thousands of times lower than have occurred in the occupational setting,” where the chemical in vapor form poses a possible risk to workers.
Carcinogens are things that can cause cancer, but that label doesn’t mean that they will or that they pose a risk to anyone exposed to them in any amount at any time.
Now,Im glad to see the ACS admitting to the dose response relationship finally!
So now we understand why the following is factual:
are hundreds if not thousands of times lower than have occurred in the occupational setting,” where the chemical in vapor form poses a possible risk to workers.
Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, Vol. 14, No. 1. (August 1991), pp. 88-105.
ETS between 10,000- and 100,000-fold less than estimated average MSS-RSP doses for active smokers
OSHA the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded
JUST AMAZING ISNT IT
Styrene is one of the anti-smokers’ hobgoblins that they fear-monger us with. From the 13th Report on Carcinogens: “The greatest source of exposure for the general population is cigarette smoking, and daily styrene intake by the nonsmoking population is expected to be orders of magnitude lower than daily intakes for workers in occupations with high styrene exposure levels (Cohen et al. 2002, IARC 2002).”
However, their main claim is that it causes lymphohematopoietic cancer, including lymphomas. As usual, they’ve ignored the fact that Epstein-Barr virus causes a subset of lymphomas, while in their review, they admit that few studies even distinguish different types of leukemias/lymphomas. Styrene is one of a long list of chemical bogeymen that have been implicated as carcinogens, based on low-quality research, and the chemical companies’ “epidemiologists” are all brainwashed to ignore infection as well, so they say nothing about this. Bottom line is that those official listings are full of BS as a result, and the public ought to know about this and why it is so – not just get reassuring words that their exposure is low so they shouldn’t worry.
Click to access styrene.pdf
Neat quote from Charlie Hebdo editor “Charb”
“I’d rather die standing up than live on my knees.”
Hear Hear!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11333250/Id-rather-die-standing-than-live-on-my-knees-Charlie-Hebdo-told-in-quotes.html